Mozilla Warns DOJ's Google Remedies Risk 'Death of Open Web' (mozilla.org) 47
Mozilla has warned that the U.S. Department of Justice's proposed remedies in its antitrust case against Google would harm independent browsers and reduce competition in the browser market. The DOJ and several state attorneys general last week filed revised proposed remedies in the U.S. v. Google search case that would prohibit all search payments to browser developers, a move Mozilla says would disproportionately impact smaller players.
"These proposed remedies prohibiting search payments to small and independent browsers miss the bigger picture -- and the people who will suffer most are everyday internet users," said Mark Surman, President of Mozilla. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, which generate revenue from hardware and operating systems, Mozilla relies primarily on search revenue to fund browser development. Mozilla argues that cutting these payments would not solve search dominance but would instead strengthen the position of tech giants.
Mozilla also warned that the proposal threatens its ability to maintain Gecko, one of only three major browser engines alongside Google's Chromium and Apple's WebKit. "If we lose our ability to maintain Gecko, it's game over for an open, independent web," Surman said, noting that even Microsoft abandoned its browser engine in 2019. "If Mozilla is unable to sustain our browser engine, it would severely impact browser engine competition and mean the death of the open web as we know it -- essentially, creating a web where dominant players like Google and Apple, have even more control, not less."
Firefox serves 27 million monthly active users in the U.S. and nearly 205 million globally.
"These proposed remedies prohibiting search payments to small and independent browsers miss the bigger picture -- and the people who will suffer most are everyday internet users," said Mark Surman, President of Mozilla. Unlike Apple and Microsoft, which generate revenue from hardware and operating systems, Mozilla relies primarily on search revenue to fund browser development. Mozilla argues that cutting these payments would not solve search dominance but would instead strengthen the position of tech giants.
Mozilla also warned that the proposal threatens its ability to maintain Gecko, one of only three major browser engines alongside Google's Chromium and Apple's WebKit. "If we lose our ability to maintain Gecko, it's game over for an open, independent web," Surman said, noting that even Microsoft abandoned its browser engine in 2019. "If Mozilla is unable to sustain our browser engine, it would severely impact browser engine competition and mean the death of the open web as we know it -- essentially, creating a web where dominant players like Google and Apple, have even more control, not less."
Firefox serves 27 million monthly active users in the U.S. and nearly 205 million globally.
Except there is no "open web".... (Score:5, Interesting)
"For this type of reason and historical experience with other media we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." [source: https://research.google/pubs/t... [research.google]
Nowadays advertisers have a marketing platform called Google and there simply isn't a consumer facing search engine capable of meeting the needs of the users. These guys didn't just break the internet, they knew they were going to break the internet, told us they were going to break the internet and then they made billions of dollars breaking the internet.
These crooks are a cartel and that's why Firefox is sticking up for their competitor. These guys are pure villains and none of this was by accident or unforeseeable.
America needs public options for tech. The algorithms that make google work were publicly funded and open-source, the parts that turn it into a predatory scam-machine are closed source and no one needs 'em. The FTC should fine the hell out of google and use the money to fund a public option for search.
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America needs public options for tech. The algorithms that make google work were publicly funded and open-source
I fully agree on this as this is a distorted market so intervention is justified. It's not really possible to be productive in the world today and not interact through a web browser at some point so while the choice of browser is technically there the choice of whether to use one at all is decided for us already so we should have a "public" alternative of sorts.
In a case like this my idea is that something like Firefox/Gecko should be able to receive Federal grants to continue it's maintenance on condition
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America needs public options for tech. The algorithms that make google work were publicly funded and open-source, the parts that turn it into a predatory scam-machine are closed source and no one needs 'em. The FTC should fine the hell out of google and use the money to fund a public option for search.
Agreed. Search is now an essential service; it's basically infrastructure and/or part of the common, and it should be rolled out, regulated, and treated the same way as public libraries, schools, and the like.
And realistically, browsers should be treated in a similar fashion. Sure, let tech companies try to get people to use their proprietary, spying crap. But the government should fund the process of taking Mozilla's code base and turning it back into a usable browser, free for anyone who wants it. Then th
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Here's what Sergey and Larry told us would happen if search engines were funded by advertising:
What exactly were AltaVista, Yahoo, or Ask Jeeves if not advertising-funded search engines? If advertising funding search was going to break the web, then it was doomed long before Google came around. They might have accelerated it though by becoming a 1-stop shop.
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Your link doesn't work.
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Independant? (Score:1)
From the sidelines it sure looks like Apple is the only leg of this stool that does not tilt Alphabet's way.
Mozilla's actions over the past 5 to 10 years sure look well aligned to whatever their ad-tech partner would like to see.
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You need some better binoculars and actually watching the right game!
dumbfucks (Score:4, Insightful)
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DEI is just anti-discrimination. They didn't preemptively cut out part of their potential workforce, you say, so they're about to fail. Bonkers.
Meanwhile, they're spending money on advertising platforms and AI and other things nobody asked for. Things that take away from their core business and cost a lot of money.
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>"DEI is just anti-discrimination."
Well, no. Primarily because "DEI" is based almost completely on immutable characteristics that shouldn't matter (like sex, race, sexual preference, age, religion, etc). It is not an effort to have diversity or inclusion of *thought*. It is, in most ways the complete opposite of meritocracy. If you are recruiting/admitting/rewarding based on immutable characteristics, that is a bad form of discrimination- rewarding people for WHAT they are, rather than WHO they are.
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That's like arguing that you shouldn't hire any Java developers because there are better qualified Rust people applying for the job. The fact that knowledge of Java is what you need is irrelevant because you are hiring based on "merit".
Diversity of thought, having a well rounded team, is a strength in itself.
Don't spread the myth of it being about lowering standards either. It's about recognizing that the way you measure merit is often flawed in ways that exclude some people. It's about improving your metri
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>"Diversity of thought [...] is a strength in itself."
Agreed. But that has *not* been the implementation, or outcome of "DEI". Often is is not the goal, either. DEI has been almost completely about race/sex/orientation/etc quotas. The "D" and the "E" are just a farce.
If the E was "equality of opportunity", that is great and everyone should stand behind that. But it isn't, it is "equity" which means "equality of OUTCOME" and that is wrong, unfair, and immoral.
If the D was "diversity of thought", that
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If you are recruiting/admitting/rewarding based on immutable characteristics, that is a bad form of discrimination- rewarding people for WHAT they are, rather than WHO they are.
Says the white male who has never hired a person in his life.
I have hired many - under a corporate DEI program - and never been discouraged from hiring the most qualified candidate.
It's about giving people the chance, not giving them the job.
If you believe that you didn't get a job because you are not coloured, gay, handicapped, female, whatever, it's just because you are an opinionated jerk. They just didn't want to say so.
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>"Says the white male who has never hired a person in his life."
You have no idea what race or sex I am, or if I have hired people or not. And it makes no difference (but your statement is wrong).
>"It's about giving people the chance, not giving them the job."
Giving people a chance is equal opportunity. That is good, has been around a long time, and not disputed. It is even the law. And no, that is NOT what DEI has generally been about.
Perhaps your company defined or interpreted it somewhat differe
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Hiring executives instead of developers is what's hurting them. They have enough money they literally could have rewritten the entire browser in Rust. And also rewritten it in Haskell, just for comparison. And I promise you can't tell the difference between code based on gender.
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Mozilla's job was to provide a counter weight to proprietary or at least corporate-captive web browser offerings.
Once Google got in the browser business that should have been seen as fundamental conflict and they should have gone looking for other revenue streams. That is what they should have been doing on the self preservation front.
I don't agree they should have been piling up some war chest, they were not setup to be an endowment fund. That money should have gone into Gecko or a successor and ensuring t
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Mozilla's job was to provide a counter weight to proprietary or at least corporate-captive web browser offerings.
Once Google got in the browser business that should have been seen as fundamental conflict and they should have gone looking for other revenue streams. That is what they should have been doing on the self preservation front.
Um... you're complaining that Mozilla isn't attempting to diversify while simultaneously dumping upon their attempts to diversify.
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they wasted it on empire-building and living a lavish lifestyle
I don't know if that's really fair. The Mozilla Foundation scores pretty well overall as a non-profit [charitynavigator.org] (though admittedly they don't get credit for the program expense ratio). However it's true that they have been spending more each of the last few years on administrative expenses, and their executive salaries are more than double the average for non-profits based on what I can find.
I think the real problem is scope creep [mozilla.org]. Mozilla wanted to be involved in all sorts of programs and projects when most of th
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Mozilla should put more resources into Firefox, really turbo-charge it. Concentrate on re-writing substantial parts to simplify the codebase and make it easier to work with. People will piss and moan but it needs to happen. Then all the other stuff can be via add-ons and side projects, but making core Firefox really really good should be the priority. On desktop and on mobile.
Unless they do that, nothing else matters. Their new "privacy protecting" ad view tracking, for example, is not something anyone want
How much was that again? (Score:1)
and now Mozilla thinks they are a "real boy"?
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How many billions did Google prop up Mozilla with?
and now Mozilla thinks they are a "real boy"?
IMHO Mozilla cannot claim Firefox is an "independent browser" while also claiming it relies on Google financing the project for it to be viable.
If Mozilla needs Google's money to survive, Google has Mozilla in their pockets already.
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Pay them outside US (Score:3)
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Mozilla is terrified firefox will have to compete in a marketplace
Uh, what marketplace is this exactly?
(hint: when the "price" of every option is capped at $0, you're the product, not the customer)
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Building web browsers (or even browser engines) has been a money-losing proposition for nearly thirty years. Once Microsoft started to bundle IE with Windows, that was effectively the end of independent browser makers being able to directly charge for the browser itself.
You can't "compete" with "free" unless you have a different way of making money on the back end. Google does. Apple does. Microsoft does. Mozilla does not.
(Microsoft is an interesting example; even with their near-total coroporate deskt
Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Score:2)
Said a company who is paid by Google and therefore is absolutely objective and can be taken seriously. Get lost.
Servo (Score:2)
No strings penalty (Score:2)
The problem is that it is TOO LATE now for any simple correction. All other browsers are now semi-owned/controlled by Google. Yes, Google certainly is an illegal monopoly in many spaces. Yes, Google used their huge power to take over almost the entire browser space. Yes, this is extremely bad and dangerous in so many ways. Had this been stopped 10+ years ago, before all non-Firefox browsers dropped their code and just based their browsers on Chromium, things would have been much better.
I am not sure what wo
Distraction (Score:2)
In the 90's Windows and Office needed to be broken up so the DoJ decided that unbunding Internet Explorer was "good enough".
Today Google and YouTube need to not depend on and tie each other so they're making Google spin off Chrome. And this is after the Covid debacle killed millions because YouTube censored origins, prevention, and treatment.
Killed millions.
Don't fall for the same trick twice.
Stuff that Google's mouthpiece says (Score:2)
Very convincing.
Alternatives (Score:1)